For stuff that I'm not sure that I'm going to continue using, I subscribe, then immediately cancel.

I think there is a market. I pay for mealime monthly, I don't even know how much it costs. The cost of an app to help the family choose a dinner menu instead of eating out is worth it. Not only for money savings, but for health as well.

One of the best features is to streamline the online ordering from the app.

It works very well.

well said, this makes zero sense to be a subscription service

All web-based software makes sense as a subscription because of ongoing maintenance costs. Servers, security updates, bug fixes, dealing with app stores, testing on new devices... it adds up in an unpredictable way.

That's not even considering the many subscriptions a developer has to pay, including to Apple.

That's... not the user's problem. This is a fine and cool project don't get me wrong. But the overall 'subscription everything' model is not really justified by costs. The subscriptions are usually orders of magnitude more than the true operating cost.

It's not the customer's job to pay you forever bc Apple wants a developer license. It's the business's job to make sure it's sustainable with the costs that it has / has chosen to bear.

That's the backpressure on business models - they're not all viable. Just because you _could_ add in a bunch of servers and cloud costs and whatever, doesn't mean it's inherently justified.

The problem is more that it's gotten _so_ cheap to run, that charging each user a seemingly-nominal 5c/day fee doesn't feel bad to an average person for a chance at value. And at scale you get enough people who figure "ah it's not that much", and end up with massive profit margins. Profiting off the disparity between the individual choice and the aggregate.

if and when someone invents microtransactions for real ... i still think being able to pay a penny or a nickel for a resource, instead of a subscription, would be an interesting experiment.

probably everyone would end up going broke but i would love to see a simulation of it, if not a real experiment.

i know nickel transactions costs a dime to process, but if it was cheap we could have new ways of having new things.

That would be kind of neat. Bc realistically the marginal costs on most digital things is negligible. But if it were practical to charge people the 1e-11 dollars per page view or whatever maybe could do some interesting things

As soon as we get microtransactions, we will also see the implementation of micro-fines.

> But the overall 'subscription everything' model is not really justified by costs

Probably shouldn't subscribe then ...

I think the argument is that you shouldn't choose to price a product as a subscription simply because you have recurring costs.

If I subscribe to a magazine or a streaming service, I continually get new content. Apps that aren't doing that are basically price gouging customers.

It’s nice of you to consider the wellbeing of other users, but I think every adult has the right to make their own decisions about how to spend their money.

If it’s not a price you’re willing to pay, that’s fine. But if someone else gets value out of it and thinks it’s a fair trade, that’s between them and the app creator.

> But if someone else gets value out of it and thinks it’s a fair trade, that’s between them and the app creator.

Since we're apparently now doing Freshman Civics:

There are many sorts of transactions that someone would get value from and think are a fair trade, but are prohibited for one reason or another.

Even for those somewhat-antisocial transactions that aren't prohibited, there's no rule that says that you can't complain about how those transactions could be more pro-social.

> Even for those somewhat-antisocial transactions that aren't prohibited, there's no rule that says that you can't complain about how those transactions could be more pro-social.

Yeah, and there's also no rule that says that other people can't tell you to shut up.

Why do you feel the need to tell them to shut up?

How about the argument that having recurring income incentivizes further development, whereas single-pay fees incentivize customer acquisition?

That's called gambling. Pay me now and maybe you'll like what comes next!

And the customers don't like it, they can stop paying.

Seems like a risk to the author. Keeping existing customers is typically easier than getting new ones.

There doesn't need to be any justification. If that's what OP wants to charge then that's reason enough.

That being said, OP should probably realize a lot of people don't pay for software--even in HN.

That's why OP needs to make sure the users are the product and find some way to sell the user data to advertisers.

OP should contact restaurants and allow them to place ads in the recommendations. He should also sell access to user data and allow restaurants and advertisers to target free users.

He can have a subscription tier that gives you privacy.

Your comment was quite the ride.

> There doesn't need to be any justification. If that's what OP wants to charge then that's reason enough.

Yep, makes sense.

> That being said, OP should probably realize a lot of people don't pay for software--even in HN.

Indeed. Maybe people pay even less on HN, seeing as many of us can hack together something for personal use.

> That's why OP needs to make sure the users are the product and find some way to sell the user data to advertisers.

Er…

> OP should contact restaurants and allow them to place ads in the recommendations. He should also sell access to user data and allow restaurants and advertisers to target free users.

Wait, what? This is app for eating at home, restaurants have nothing to do with it.

> He can have a subscription tier that gives you privacy.

Full-on dystopia.

Makes sense as a subscription for the developer, not the user. I’d not pay for this, subscription or not. It’s up to the person trying to sell me something to either convince me to pay (not happening in this case) or figure out other ways of making money (deals with restaurants, premium features, idk).

I get that there is work behind it, there is work behind everything, and I get they are reoccurring. What you mention is still valid, but in the real world, sob story about costs to run something are not something the customer cares about.

Even if the service can't be delivered indefinitely for a one-time payment, subscriptions as the only option are a hard sell at this point, because most people are feeling the effects of subscription fatigue

A 1-year pricing option or 30-day trial with the option to pay up front for a year or a month, without it becoming a subscription is way more compelling to the user than signing up for a subscription that one then has to remember to cancel.

I personally subscribe to Amazon Prime and that's it. A service has to meet an incredibly high bar for me to consider a subscription, and I wouldn't have considered it with Amazon until after they had set up their global prime delivery infrastructure/network and video streaming service. I'm not going to give my credit card to a company that makes picking out a recipe slightly easier to keep on file, that's a ludicrous proposition.

From a consumer’s perspective, paying for a product or service is an exchange of money for value. Even with a service, there’s a tangible result—like a fresh haircut or the convenience of not dealing with tax filing. Paying only makes sense when there’s value in return, which isn’t true for many subscription services. Arguments about “maintenance costs” hold little weight for customers who don’t perceive any added value.

In some cases, subscriptions are reasonable, such as when software would be a heavy burden on personal devices, like power-intensive language models, or when it needs to stay compliant with evolving legal requirements, like an accounting software or something.

A larger issue is Apple’s push for subscription-based software in almost everything, often to bolster its bottom line, while damaging the industry as a whole for the reasons mentioned.

Also subscription to a developer is a product for them, it has nothing to do with the product they create for others

The point of commercial software shouldn't to satisfy the need of their developpers to get paid for it but to reach that intersection where it is useful enough for many users to accept paying a decent price for it and allow dev to make a profit.

If that intersection is unreachable in the first place, there is just no sense to mention maintenance costs.

So don’t be inept and make a web service out of what can and should be local-first.

Really one of the most ridiculous things I can remember seeing.

The HN crowd isn't going to like it, but this is the perfect one for ads.

Perfect.

I hate ads, but you're actually right in this case. If done with moderation and purpose—like the YouTube videos that promote a high-quality cooking ingredient while meaningfully explaining why it’s better—it could work well.

Or, commission from ordering items from the recipes via local stores.

There are servers needed for the app to work, right? So I guess subscription makes sense?

Of course then there is the price of the subscription... But I'm talking about the model, not the cost.

The trouble is the justification of a subscription is evaluated differently by businesses and customers, and both perspectives are rational. If you’ve got servers to pay for, subscriptions are a very appealing model since it makes the “is this business sustainable” math very easy (and less charitably lots of businesses are after that sweet sweet subscription revenue because it tends to be sticky). As a customer, I think it’s also very reasonable to get annoyed that “everything is becoming a subscription” and say “why would I pay this much for something I might need once in a blue moon.”

GP did say they understand why. Doesn't mean it's compelling from the other side.

'Pay for what you use' (micropayments?) seems under-explored outside of cloudhosting to me. Some small cost per meal solves the same problem while seeming more reasonable (or more obviously reasonable) to the consumer, doesn't it?

Honestly, the servers an app like this would need would be a $3/mo VPS. I'm not arguing about the price, the author can charge whatever he wants, but I don't think he'll get many customers that way. It's a good thing that the server requirements are minimal.

> There are servers needed for the app to work, right?

But why?

This is described as "a simple app, in which we listed all the recipes we ever prepared, and it would propose randomly three of them. We would then choose together one of them."

You could, if you chose to, built/architect that in a way that doesn't require a backend at all.

You can use deep link URIs to send a _lot_ of data in a link in an email (like literally gigabytes on iOS). Easily enough data to send each other newly added meals/recipes.

You could also encode recipes in QR Codes, so one person enters a new recipe and the other can scan a QR Code the app generates to grab it - you can get about 4kb into a high density QR Code that'll read reliably off a phone screen.

Use one of those to maintain the whole meal/recipe database on each device, no backend required.

Maybe use a date based PRNG so both ends will pick the same "three random recipes" every day.

Send messages between apps as emails with deep links in them, so one user can use the native iOS "share by email" widget to send a "hey, what do you want for dinner" email, with an app generated message with three deeplinks, one for each random choice. Recipient responds by tapping the deep link for their recipe choice, which opens their version of the app - and the app digs the data out off the deeplink URI to pres3ent a "share your choice" button that also uses the native iOS "share by email" widget to send the response back to the first user.

Tapping links in emails and sharing via email isn't as "nice" as an app with a centralised database and push notifications, but it also has zero ongoing cost to run and you know for sure the developer has no lever to enshittify the service, and has no user PII or usage data to sell to surveillance capitalists.

Hmmm, I wonder if you could do this entirely as a web app?

OP mentioned this is a “simple app”. They should follow the example of the author of parcelapp.net, which charges less than 5 EUR a year. That’s 50 k€ per year (judging by the ten thousand of reviews (4.8/5 star average) on the Apple App Store. Without taxes, of course.

More than enough to pay for server costs.

Worth noting that Parcel used to be a one-time purchase, and those who bought during that time are grandfathered in with a lifetime account.

Unfortunately, the Apple Developer account is not a one-time purchase and neither is the recurring payment to keep the server used by the app. People need to stop expecting one-time payments for online services

Skip the Apple tax and build a web app. A simple web app like this should not cost a significant amount of money to host.

This was just great. I laughed.

Then I got hit with 753 ads and stopped laughing. But still pretty fun.

My favorite restaurant’s rent isn’t a one-time purchase either but they still manage to sell me a meal without an annual subscription.

Having to eat food is a lifetime subscription. I guess the point is you would pay for the app once, but visit the restaurant multiple times. I think something like a small initial fee plus donations to keep it running would be good for such an app as this.

Bad analogy. You keep paying the restaurant for every meal, whereas you would pay only once for the app.

The argument I was responding to was “The developer has ongoing costs therefore the user can’t expect not to have ongoing costs.”

I might eat at a restaurant only once.

You'd rather pay every time you use it?

If the price was reasonable (less than ten cents in this case), absolutely.

I don't think you can charge so little. You'd probably have to buy some amount of runs in bulk.

Another alternative would be you buy access for a block of time, but not an auto renewing subscription. Mullvad VPN works like this, I have to go into the app and re-up if I want to keep using it every month.

However I think this type of app should be a one time purchase anyway. Looks to me like it could work without any server / hosted infrastructure.

This is actually a great idea. Lots of subscriptions just pay for a thing to be available. Netflix will tell you "sleeping giants" who never watch are ok, because the content was made available, but I think that's BS. I'd love to see a system where you're only billed on the months that you use it. Or even just charge me a dollar per use with a monthly cap of ten after which the rest of the month is free.

A better analogy is the usual "car" analogy: I bought my car in cash as a one time purchase. Even though Toyota needs to maintain their network of dealerships and service centers, finance their factories' operations, and pay their employees, I still don't have to pay a monthly subscription for the car (yet). If I drive it, I pay to put gasoline in it and maintain it every so often, and that's it. If I don't drive it, it sits in my garage and I don't have to pay monthly for it.

This idea that customers should need to pay for all of a business's business costs and overhead as the overhead happens is a new one, and an annoying one.

But you maintain your car don't you ? If you need to fix the car, you're generally on the hook for that (besides manufacturing defects etc). Then there are normal maintenance costs you're always on the hook for.

Generally anything physical you own, you're on the hook for maintaining. But software is different isn't it ? If you pay a lifetime fee for an app, are you expected to maintain it ?

I bet that if manufacturers were also on the hook for maintaining cars they'd sold indefinitely, we'd be on subscription fees there too.

Obviously, some apps have negligible maintenance so i'm not saying a subscription model is the best model for all cases, just that i don't think the analogy with cars fits exactly.

You should have started the app on an Android first. An Android developer license is only a one time $25 fee. Once you build it on Android, you can gauge the response and determine how much to charge on other platforms. And build it using a build once, deploy many framework, such as React Native or Flutter, that way porting it to any device would be a sinch! My piece of advice.

I remember reading years ago that people were much more likely to pay for apps (outside of games) on Apple vs Android. I wonder what the current distribution looks like.

why even have a android app? just build it on the web.

on the plus side everyone can use it on any device they would like.

online services do have inherent costs that need to be paid especially for products that provide value.

i do wonder if for new products they should opt for a webapp instead which would negate the apple/google tax and it would allow android users to also try

It's almost like so many things are broken at every level...

Apple dev account costs $99/year. Do you really need to recoup that from the first 6 customers? (5 + 1, since one has to pay for the 15% Apple cut.)

I'd like to see a new subscription model emerge:

some base price quote.

then, the more I use it, the cheaper it gets, or at least never "the more expensive it gets" (in this way we can get tiers, but it's not quoted as screw-you plan)

and, I stop using it, I stop paying

If the base price is attractive to try, put in my credit card and try. If I keep liking it, I keep using it, if I don't, I don't. It's what we all want, just give it to us.

usually called "pay by use".... tinder does that: you get free swipes. and fill in the top and bottom with relevant ads. You go premium...well then depends.

But I have to admit, a food matching app with this approach would be strange since the person I am truing to match is know to me and possibly living in the same place.

I would personally open a chatGPT session and tell what I have eaten today or this week and should suggest from the history when I need it.

> I would personally open a chatGPT session and tell what I have eaten today or this week and should suggest from the history when I need it.

Honestly, an interesting idea. Finetune Llama on a bunch of nutrition info and it can help you find out what micros you’re missing and maybe even find recipes to help your macros

> $10 one time purchase

I miss when good apps were selling for $2 on the app stores.

> $10 one time purchase

Author of a $10 one time purchase app here. People have been acclimatized to paying rent on apps for so long that I routinely get emails asking for a cheaper monthly option, because $10 is too steep. :)

There's a business idea: let users buy apps that cost $10 for say $2/month, 3 months minimum. Eat the risk of users cancelling, make bank on the large minority who end up paying 50 times. Add some dark patterns and confusing language to keep your margins up. Liberally claim fraud for apps where users consistently pay $6 but you're out $10.

If you could execute this technically it's clearly a billion-dollar idea, but maybe the only people with the right connections to do it are Apple and Google.

A reverse might also work: a platform that provides a prepaid plan in a transparent way. Let the user pay for three months in advance. Cut off the service afterwards if they don't pay for the fourth month. Bonus: provide a one-time purchase option too.

Add a $3.99/mo recurring subscription option.